“I need less heads,” Benioff said at the time.
But as more companies adopt agentic AI in hopes of replacing or making human workers more efficient, one top economist has noted that customer service roles—particularly those overseas—are only growing.
The apparent contradiction of the job’s potential to be automated alongside rising employment points to a centuries-old economic paradox reflected across labor more broadly, according to Slok.
“This is Jevons paradox in action,” he wrote. “As AI makes call center work cheaper and faster, companies are buying more of it, not less.”
“Lower cost per interaction does not mean fewer interactions,” he said. “It means more customers served, more channels opened and more markets worth reaching. The technology that was supposed to shrink the industry is fueling its expansion.”
Instead, Christoph Herpfer, an economist and business administration professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, said the number of radiologists in the U.S. has actually increased by 10% over the past decade.
“What we’re now seeing in the data might be a modern version of the same phenomenon,” she told Fortune. “We can trade labor more easily across countries when language can be traded more seamlessly.”
While some economists expect AI’s strengths to bolster productivity and subsequent employment, others argue the technology’s weaknesses will sustain the call center industry.
In other cases, some companies may explicitly seek out human customer service agents simply because of their brand, according to Shestakofsky. As the world becomes more automated, it’s sometimes a relief to talk to a human on the other line.
“Even if the LLMs get so good that eventually they can deal with those complex issues—which I don’t think they can do now—I would still expect that you would see some companies seeing the value and offering more human interactions that help customers feel seen, feel like they’re more than just a number on a spreadsheet,” he said.
